Human Rights Based Budget Analysis and
Budget Work
The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO, 2009) distinguishes between budget analysis and
budget work: for FAO, budget analysis refers to "work related to analyzing figures in the
government's budget-whether those are revenue, allocation or expenditure figures," while
budget work "can include budget analysis, but also encompasses work such as expenditure
tracking of various sorts, assessments of the impact of government expenditures, community
education about the budget, advocacy related to the way the budget impacts the poor, and so
on."
Human rights based budget analysis is a thorough and detailed review of the budget, using
human rights norms, standards and principles. lt involves the collection, study and
interpretation of budget data from the perspective of human rights, the correlation of budget
data to human rights, their normative content and corresponding obligations, and the
establishment of findings and results. lt seeks to affect both the budget decisions and the way
budget issues are decided, by providing analysis and information that is credible, accessible to
a wide range of audiences, and timely.
Human rights based budget analysis and budget work have been conducted by a variety of
actors, applying different methodology, but all based on human rights norms, standards and
principles. These are described below.
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Christian Aid and SOMO's Tax Justice Advocaey (2011)
Christian Aid and SOMO recently released a toolkit on tax justice advocacy for civil society.
They recommend a systematic advocacy strategy to achieve tax justice, based on a six-step
advocacy cycle.
Step 1 involves the identification of the problem and its root causes and finding a solution.
Step 2 requires the assessment of the external context, including the conduct of power
analysis, Step 3 involves setting tax goals, objectives and indicators, while Step 4 is the
development of key messages. Step 5 is the decision on the advocacy approach and Step 6
involves planning the monitoring and evaluation of the tax advocacy strategy.
The toolkit contains a variety of tools (such as, for example, "but why" or the problem tree, etc.),
which, although not human rights based, may be adapted within the human rights context. The
toolkit also contains helpful tips on the conduct of tax research, a proposed "'Poor person's' tax
burden survey," and a list of tax resources and glossary.
tnstitute for Socioeconomic Studies (NESC)'s Budget Analysis Method from the Perspective of
Human Rights(2009)
The lnstitute for Socioeconomic Studies (INESC) is a Brazilian non-profit organization that
seeks to "contribute toward improving representative and parlicipatory democracy with the aim
of ensuring human rights, by fostering links in civil society and strengthening it to influence
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